by Steven S. Little

The story I’m about to tell you is true.

A few years ago I traveled to Baltimore, Maryland, for a speaking engagement. Anyone who travels for business knows that it is hardly glamorous. After 9/11, however, it became even more frustrating, and it keeps getting worse. I don’t think I’d be overstating it to say that business travel today is horrific: irretrievably lost luggage, annoying security searches, perpetually oversold flights, infuriating rental car policies, frazzled counter staff . . . I think you get the picture.

Despite all the traumas of travel, I decided a few years ago to always keep a smile on my face. The way I look at it: if the business travel industry gets the best of me, they win and I lose. I just can’t allow that to happen.

I keep a smile on my face by keeping my eye on a prize. My prize at the end of every business travel day is a vanilla milkshake . . . a thick, gooey, luscious, indulgent vanilla milkshake. I’m talking a hand-dipped, old-fashioned, malt-shoppy kind of milkshake. I don’t just like ’em; I love ’em. Both my career and my mental well-being literally depend on them. The image of that milkshake is the proverbial dangling carrot that gets me through even the worst travel day.

It had been a particularly difficult day of planes, trains, and automobiles. I was to arrive at the Baltimore/Washington International (BWI) Airport at 7:00 P.M . for dinner with my clients at 8:00 P.M . Unfortunately, I arrived at midnight. In other words, there was nothing out of the ordinary so far.

I grabbed my bags and stood in a long taxicab line to take the 20-minute ride to Baltimore’s beautiful Inner Harbor. I was cold, wet, tired, and hungry, but smiling, because I was going to get that vanilla milkshake.

When I finally got to my room an hour later the first thing I did was call room service where I was greeted by Stuart.
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by Tessa Stowe

I’d like you to take a moment right now and, before you continue reading this article, decide whether you think selling is simple or complicated? Please now read on.

Before I start to specifically talk about selling, I’d like to first discuss ‘complicated’ versus ’simple’.

In the past we have been taught to respect and value the ‘complicated.’ Whole industries have cropped up to make complicated products, to convince us we need these complicated products and to then help us use these complicated products.

On the other hand, in the past we have not respected or valued the ’simple’. The simple is seen as common sense and by definition, since it’s ‘common’ sense, it’s perceived value is diminished.

The absolute irony is that to make something complicated is simple and to make something simple is complicated! To make something simple requires a lot of effort and skill. To make something simple often requires a lot more time and expense than to make it complicated.

Recently people have started to demand the simple in their lives and are seeing the value in simple. Simplicity now sells and people are even starting to pay more money for the simple.

Now let’s come back to selling and whether it is complicated or simple.

I think that not only have we been convinced that selling is complicated but we also use the perspective that selling is complicated as an excuse. Let me explain further.

We have been told that selling is complicated. We have been convinced that:

* As the products we are selling get more and more complicated, the selling of these complicated products must by definition get more complicated as well.
* As the number of people involved in making a single purchasing decision increases, the more complicated the selling becomes.
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by Brian Tracy

To improve your sales performance, adopt the Golden Rule mentality. The Golden Rule says to, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” It also says, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” The Golden Rule mentality in sales, says simply, “Sell unto others as you would have them sell unto you.”

Different Strokes For Different Folks
What does this mean? Aren’t there all kinds of different personalities that require different approaches and techniques? Well, yes and no. Practicing the golden rule in selling simply means that you sell to other people the way you would like to be sold to. You sell with the same honesty, integrity, understanding, empathy and thoughtfulness that you would like someone else to use in selling to you.

Seek First to Understand
If you would like a salesperson to take the time to thoroughly understand you and your situation before making a recommendation, you practice the same thing with your customers. If you would like a salesperson to give you honest information and to help you make an intelligent buying decision, you practice the same with your customer. If you would like a salesperson to be thoroughly knowledgeable about the strengths or weaknesses of his or her product or service, and that of his or her competitors, then you do the same with your product or service and your competitors. Continue Reading »

by Wendy Weiss, “The Queen of Cold Calling”

Whenever I conduct a workshop or teleclass, invariably someone asks the question: “What should I say when the prospect says, ‘I’m not interested?’”

My response invariably is: “It’s probably too late.”

Certainly you can try to recover from that “I’m not interested” response. You can ask, “Why do you say that?” (Say this gently, as though you are confused and really, really want the answer.) You can repeat back: “Not interested?” (Again, say this gently, as though you are confused.) This sometimes gets people to start talking and explain themselves. Bottom line, however, if everyone that you speak with says, “I’m not interested,” you’re not saying anything interesting.

If you have a compelling script with stellar delivery, you will hardly ever hear the words, “I’m not interested.” That’s because you will actually be saying something interesting!

On the telephone, you have approximately 10-20 seconds to grab your prospect’s attention - and if you do not do that, your call is probably over. 10-20 seconds is not a lot of time. You are not going to convey a lot of information in 10-20 seconds. Instead, what you’ll convey is your energy, your confidence and your excitement. Your words must reach out and immediately grab and hook your prospect’s attention.

>From the moment your prospect says, “Hello,” your goal is to gain your prospect’s attention so that she is hungry to hear more. If you don’t hook your prospects in the beginning of your conversation, they will not want to speak with you. They will say, “I’m not interested,” and worse case, they may hang up on you.

In order to hook your prospect, ask yourself: Whom are you calling? Why should they be interested? You’re looking for hot buttons, those issues that are so important to your prospect that when they come up, your prospect stops in her tracks to listen. The big point here is that when you are trying to hook someone, you have to have some sense of what’s important to them. Continue Reading »

by John Boe

If you’re working hard, but aren’t consistently generating enough
sales and getting referrals, chances are it’s a matter of trust. One
of the most critically important and yet frequently overlooked
aspects of selling is creating a solid foundation of trust and
rapport.

Suppose you could incorporate a few simple, yet highly effective
ideas into your selling process and substantially increase your
bottom line?

Successful salespeople have a knack for making people feel
important. They understand the value of building trust and
rapport early on in the selling process. For you see, it really
doesn’t matter how knowledgeable you are about your product
line or how many closing techniques you have mastered, unless
you earn your prospect’s trust and confidence you’re not going
to make the sale period.

Once you have established trust and rapport with your prospect,
you actually have the hard part behind you and can anticipate
making the sale. While there’s no system that will work 100
percent of the time with every prospect, fortunately there are
fundamentals you can use that will help you build trust and
rapport quickly.

Gain the Competitive Edge
Whether you like it or not, people form impressions about you
based on such factors as appearance and attitude. When it
comes to building trust and rapport, there is nothing more
important than making a favorable first impression.

It’s important to remember that in most cases, your prospect’s
first impression of you will be made over the phone or from a
voice message you leave.
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by Dan Coughlin

Leadership is the ability to influence how other people think in ways that generate better sustainable results both for your organization and for the people you serve. Leadership is not based on title, authority, income, or the number of people you influence.

One of the most important aspects of leadership is determining your leadership style and then sticking with it. I’ve seen every style of leadership be effective, except for one. My leadership style can be summed up in two words: austerity and collaboration. Austerity means to be rigorously simple and collaboration means to build on one another’s ideas. My goal is to provide the simplest and clearest ideas and processes that I can insert that will help the group achieve its desired outcomes.

However, I’ve seen people who I thought were rude and arrogant be effective leaders. I’ve seen people who I thought were far too meek be effective leaders. I’ve seen people with every conceivable type of personality and approach to others who were effective as leaders. Except one.
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The following is an excerpt from the book Negotiation Genius by Deepak Malhorta and Max H. Bazerman

Conflicts of Interest
When people talk about conflicts of interest, they usually assume that professionals consciously consider these opposing forces (what’s good for them versus their professional obligations). Take, for example, the old lawyer joke, “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how long you play the game,” which implies that attorneys are primarily motivated to maximize their billable hours. However, when lawyers are paid by the hour, they may truly come to believe that their clients are best served by a thorough, time-intensive process, whereas lawyers whose clients pay them a percentage of a settlement may be more likely to believe that their clients are best served by a quick agreement. These beliefs are not conscious or deliberately unethical, but they are biased by circumstance. Or as Upton Sinclair once stated, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

In buyer-seller negotiations, it is common for the seller to believe that she is selling a higher-quality product than the buyer thinks he is buying. In fact, buyers often believe that the goods offered by different sellers are indistinguishable from each other, while the sellers view their own products as significantly better than those of other providers. Thus, when a salesperson says, “Sure, I will benefit if you buy our product, but I wouldn’t try to sell it to you if I didn’t believe it was the best product for you and your company,” she may well believe this statement. Yet substantial research tells us that the seller’s conflict of interest (being honest vs. making the sale) can lead her to unconsciously view the world through a biased lens and to believe that her product is the very best option for you — even when that is not the case. When a seller claims that his products are the best on the market, and a prospective buyer believes that the products are indistinguishable from those of the competition, the buyer is likely to make sinister attributions about the seller’s ethics. When the discussion is over, the buyer assumes that the seller’s statements were indicative of unethical behavior when, in fact, the seller was falling prey to the psychological trap that Sinclair predicted.

The Problem of Agents

Conflicts of interest often become most problematic when agents are involved — whether the agents are investment bankers, lawyers, literary agents, real-estate agents, or some other type of third party with a stake in the negotiation’s outcome. Consider what happens when a real-estate agent advises you, the buyer, to raise your bid on a house even though your current bid is consistent with a rational assessment of the property’s value. Is the agent thinking only of her own commission? Continue Reading »